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McCain Calls for a Harder Line on North Korea

By Elisabeth Bumiller May 27, 2008 11:19 amMay 27, 2008 11:19 am

DENVER—Senator John McCain kept up his attacks on Senator Barack Obama on Tuesday as naïve in foreign policy and appeared critical of the Bush administration’s diplomatic engagement in North Korea. Both positions were precursors of a speech on nuclear security policy that Mr. McCain gave today at the University of Denver.

In a Tuesday opinion article in the Wall Street Journal Asia written with his good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, Mr. McCain took an oblique but sharp swipe at Mr. Obama, who has said he would meet with the leaders of some of the United States’ greatest enemies, including North Korea.

“We must never squander the trust of our allies and the respect for our highest office by promising that the president will embark on an open-ended, unconditional personal negotiation with a dictator responsible for running an international criminal enterprise, a covert nuclear weapons program and a massive system of gulags,’’ Mr. McCain and Mr. Lieberman said in the article.
On North Korea, the two said: “American leadership is also needed on North Korea. We must use the leverage available from the U.N. Security Council resolution passed after Pyongyang’s 2006 nuclear test to ensure the full and complete declaration, disablement and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear facilities, in a verifiable manner, which we agreed to with the other members of the six-party talks.’’

Mr. McCain’s aides said on Tuesday morning that the language did not represent a break with the Bush administration and simply represented Mr. McCain’s insistence that the United States be able to verify any deal in which North Korea promises to give up its nuclear weapons. Mr. McCain has long supported the six-party negotiations — between the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia – and diplomatic engagement.

Later today, Mr. McCain is to appear with Mr. Bush at a closed-door fund-raiser in Phoenix. McCain officials have said they do not want the unpopular president to appear too often in public with presumptive Republican nominee, but they have no problems with Mr. Bush, historically a prodigious fund-raiser for his party, helping Mr. McCain to collect checks.

McCain only APPEARS critical of Bush if it will help his campaign. But McCain truly does ADORE Bush and believes in everything he has said and done in this country. These two are like simease twins! Yeah right, believe it if you want to!

McBush will continue to get it wrong. It will also be hard to dissociate himself from the incumbent, with utterances like ” Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”.
I can smell warmonger from thousands of yards away. No amount of flip flop and policy position sifting will save him either. He is an out of touch oldie.

Back-channel communications happen all of the time between nation states, and that should be a prerequisite for any Presidential visit overseas.
No President should hop on “Airforce 1″ and land unannounced at Yangon International Airport to chat-up the junta.

If that’s what Obama has in mind, it only reinforces his lack of foreign policy experience. He’s not got my vote in any case.

McCain is starting to scare me. Do we really want this man to be Commander in Chief.

Beware of Politicians that think they are Generals and Generals who think they are politicians.

Some of the best Commander in Chiefs did not have military experience. That includes Lincoln and FDR, but certainly does not include Bush, who was dumb enough to let Bremer, Cheney, Fife, Rumsfeld, Slocombe.and Wolfowicz with no military service plan and run the Iraq War. Yes, Rumsfeld was a Navy Pilot but he never saw combat

The sign of a great Commander in Chief or President for that matter is who he selects for his cabinet. Is willing to listen to expert advice and is willing to admit mistakes and fixes them.

Bush certainly doesn’t fit that mold and McCain with all his experience doesn’t seem to fit that mold either. I actually considered voting for McCain when he ran against Bush, but he is not the same man.

By the way, where is Obama’s rapid response squad? I know McCain’s Op-ed is tactical but i expect Democrats to frame the debate in their own term. Obama should not yield the ground of national security to McCain but should frame it in his own language. We are not safer and tough talk won’t do us any good. McCain drum beat of war will not make us safer.

It is time for Hillary to get out of the race. This is the problem i have with Democrats when it comes to national security. They are always responding too late. They should be all over McCain on this one – most especially since Iraq was a fiasco.

Hillary is becoming part of the problem and it seems she is aiding and abetting McCain on this one. She needs to get out of the race now. Obama need to reshuffle his team and get them ready for the rapid response on foreign security. Where is Susan Rice, and Co.

Absolutely fatal to have any idnetification with Bush, on diplomacy or anything else. War will be McCaian downfall. Obviously he has no grasp of America’s dislike of Bush on basically everything the man has tried to do. If there is to be a Bush legacy, what is it? He has accomplished nothing other than passing tax cut bill during time of war.

It must be galling to McBush-Lieberman that less than a week after McBush piggybacked on King George II’s remarks labeling Obama an “appeaser”, the Israeli government announced it is currently engaged in peace negotiations with the Assad dictatorship in Syria, the regime responsible for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

McCain is sounding more and more like Buck Turgidson, the bellicose philandering cartoon character in Dr Strangelove every day.
McCain, who is on record as contending that the U.S. could have won the Vietnam War with the “right strategy” and a more effective use of air power,now wants to win the Korean War or fight it all over again, regardless of its effects on North Koreans, South Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese, all of whom have very direct security and other interests in what happens in Korea. Although I have no sympathy on any level for Patrick Buchanan, his comment that McCain on foreign policy will make Bush look like Mahatma Gandhi may become prophecy if McCain reaches the White House. Too bad both George C. Scott and Peter Sellers are gone. Sellers particularly might have played McCain, Lieberman, and Kim of North Korea in a remake of Dr. Strangelove, Pastor Strangelove

If McCain wants to back up his rhetoric,
he should call for a draft and end the tax-cuts.
Yep, an honest conservative would insist on a “pay as you go” policy and start bleeding the wealthy.
The problem is that he is not honest.

McCain has jumped the shark, as they say. He appears set to continue with renewed vigor the worst failures of the bush administration. In this case, his bombastic statements are belied by the fact that our only bright moment with North Korea came after “GASP” negotiations. It is difficult to believe that this is the same person who was once seen as a political maverick. I did have respect for him once.

So, Mccain will stop negotiation(that Bush finally started) with N.korea that now has then contained and launch another war?
Mr.McCain continues to show everyday why we cannot trust him with the responsibility for foreign policy of the country!

It’s funny how Presidential candidates have not changed with the times at all. They insist on using the same tactics that haven’t changed any countries’ attitudes for the past 30 years. That’s right McCain do the same thing that hasn’t worked for over 30 years.

The trust of our allies and the respect for our highest office can only be bolstered by an American president capable, with the requisite intelligence, of meeting with foreign leaders and setting the direction for effective diplomacy. John McCain doesn’t have what it takes. He already shows poor judgement in trusting his alter ego, Joe Lieberman.

It seems the “all stick, no carrot” approach has been a disasterous failure these eight years, sinking us further and further into the realm of “belligerent aggressor” than “strong-willed negotiator.”

I do respect Sen. McCain terribly, but it’s time for exclusively bull-headed foreign policy to be balanced by some practical but strong diplomacy. Remember, even Dick Nixon went to China and Ronald Reagan met with the Soviets.

Diplomacy should not be equated with weakness; we’re weaker now because of the relentless blunt force preferred by Bush, Cheney and now McCain.

It’s tough to make the case that this Bush/McCain/Lieberman foreign policy has been anything but an utter, complete failure, yet we’re supposed to sign on for another four years of it?

Why does Senator McCain think America can’t hold its own against our adversaries? Why does Senator McCain think that the military is our only element of national power? Sounds like McCain is the naive one in this contest.

McCain and Lieberman are spot on with their analysis of Obama’s pledge to meet with these despots without preconditions. Total naivete. It is hard to underestimate how much of a lightweight Obama is on these matters, or his utter lack of any grasp of military matters in general. He parrots the usual liberal lines, but does not really understand anything to do with the US military. Has he been to Iraq to see the troops and conditions for himself? Does he even understand what Memorial Day stands for? I heard a Memorial Day speech he gave yesterday in New Mexico where he stated that on this day we “Honor our country’s unboken line of fallen heroes, I see many of them in the audience here today”?!?!? Were there really dead soldiers in the audience? Does this guy have a clue? The mind reels.

If McCain made that statement, they would say he is senile and unfit for office. For Obama, its just plain ignorance, and of course was not mentioned on this blog.

It is interesting how the Republican Party who stood for isolationism in 80 years ago, has become the party of war. It was the Republican Party’s strong opposition that kept the US out of the League of Nations. The seeds the were sown then have blossomed into the mess we have today.

For John McCain to continue the ineffective policies of the past is only going to leave to more war and isolation of the US. In the 1920s we isolated ourselves to stay out of war; we now are isolating ourselves because we are the causer of wars. How sad for the party of Lincoln.

Somebody seriously needs to tell McCain he needs to stop sounding like Bush.

With the primary winding down, people are actually beginning to pay attention to what this man is saying.

And based upon the last few weeks, he indeed is playing into the stereotype that his would be a third Bush term.

Obama has a weakness on foreign policy. But not against Bush-style foreign policy.

In the end, I think a lot of people will wince if they continue to hear rhetoric like this, including all of you Hillary supporters who are vowing to stay home in protest, and many moderates who want change in foreign policy.

None of you can tell me you aren’t remotely worried about McCain, who in some respects is even a bigger hawk than Bush.

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